


The Waiting Game

by amandaskankovich



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-08 22:46:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6877924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amandaskankovich/pseuds/amandaskankovich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>6 years into Mickey’s 8 year (with good behavior) sentence someone moves into his house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written as a way of making peace with the deeply dissatisfying canon of this deeply dissatisfying show, to write no more about it, and move on.

He did the best he could to memorize his face and his body every bump and scar. But he knew it wouldn’t be enough. He’d get one whiff of fresh air and he’d lose his smell.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

Promises to keep.

“Breathe.”

“I am.”

“No you’re not.”

“I fucking…am.” That last part comes out sliced three ways between a sob and scream and a gasp. And there’s no pretending now. He’s terrified.

“It’ll be okay.”

“How?”

“She knows you’re coming.”

“No I mean…how…for you?”

Once upon a time there was a dumb shit kid named Holden. Holden is a stupid fucking name. “It’s from a book.” He’d said over and over like that made it less of a stupid fucking name. He read the book in high school. He hated his name even more after that.

“Park…”

They call him Park in here. Short for Parker. His last name which he’d never been particularly attached to but preferred to his first.

“Park. Look down okay.”

“I can’t.”

“Okay then don’t look. Just drop your hand.”

He did. And he felt fingers reach up and grab his. Felt them entwine with his. “It’ll be okay. I’ll be okay.”

“You’ll be alone.”

He’s quiet now.

“That was always going to happen.”

He opens his eyes. He takes a deep breath. He climbs down from his bunk. He looks at him.

Mickey gives him a, “You good now?” smile.

He doesn’t want to imagine what he must look like. Probably a lot like he did when he first came here. Or how he’d felt at least. Out of his mind terrified.

“You wanna lay down with me now?”

Of course he did. He always wanted to.

*

There’s no one outside when he gets there. He gets confused. He doesn’t have a phone. He doesn’t want to go back inside to use the payphone because a part of him thinks they won’t let him out. A part of him wants that. A part of him wants that so badly he has to dig his fingers into his skin to keep himself from bolting back inside. Behind him he hears a woman’s voice. She’s got a Russian accent.

“You Parker?”

She’s beautiful. Something about her face makes him think of a cat.

“You’re Mickey’s wife?”

She nods, “We go now. I borrowed this car. I have to get Yevgeny from school.”

Yevgeny.

He wasn’t ready for that.

What would he say? Should he have brought a toy? He had twenty dollars. Could they stop somewhere? What did six year olds like? Dinosaurs?

He had zoned out. And when she spoke again there was slight irritation in her voice. “We have to go. Now.”

*

She drove fast.

“You don’t have family?”

“What?”

She took a drag from a cigarette she held out the window. They’d stopped at a red light a little too sharply.

“You have no family. In Chicago?”

“Um…well…no. They um…they moved while I was locked up.”

“What did you do?” She asked him.

“I um…I robbed a gas station.”

She gave him a look, “Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“You got five years?”

Holden was quiet for a second. “Well I had a knife.”

“Ah.” She said nodding.

“Yeah,” he said, “Can you go slower at all?”

She ignored that. “So no family in Chicago?”

“No. Like I said they moved but it doesn’t really matter where they are. I don’t actually care where they are. Mickey’s here.”

She looked at him, “You gonna wait for him then?”

He looked at her, “Of course I am.”

They stopped.

“Why’d we stop?”

She motioned towards the big red brick building being exited by one eager child after another.

“This is Yevgeny’s school.” She opened the driver’s door. “You want to come in?”

“No.” He said a bit too quickly.

She looked at him. Then grabbed her purse and slammed the door,

He sat in the passenger’s seat. He looked at himself in the rearview mirror.

He decided he looked tired. Sick. Older than he did inside his head.

He needed a hair cut. His brown hair was pulled back in a short ponytail that looked dirty to him. He should shave. He looked…

He stopped looking at himself.

He wanted to smoke. What was Mickey doing? It was 3:00 so…they’d be checking to see if they got any mail but Mick didn’t get mail so he’d have headed straight to the yard.

He could send him mail. He could write to him. Mickey might like that. They hadn’t talked about it. They should have talked about it. But they’d kept putting it off talking about him getting out. Until…He couldn’t go to his parents because of his probation. He didn’t want to anyway. He’d resigned himself to a halfway house situation until Mickey came to him one day out of the blue and said he’d made arrangements for him to stay at his house. His wife lived there but she wouldn’t care as long as he helped with bills once he managed to land any kind of work.

“It’s my house anyway.” Mickey had said, “So it’s not like she could just say no.”

“Your house?” The idea made him feel calmer for the first time in days.

“It’s not the Ritz or anything,” Mickey had said looking shy at Park’s obvious relief. “In fact it’s kind of a shit hole but I don’t want you in one of those places with a bunch of fucking strangers.”

He wanted to kiss him. He wanted to touch him. But they were eating breakfast.

“I get to meet your kid.” He’d said instead.

Mickey had smiled at him, “Be careful his mom says he’s going through a biting thing.”

*

The car doors unlocked. A little blonde boy climbed into the backseat.

Park looked at him. The kid looked back.

He looked at his mother.

“Кто этот человек, Mom?”

She gave a surprise smile at that.

“He does this when he’s shy. This is your father’s friend. He’s going to stay with us for a little while until–”

Svetlana looked to him for that.

“Until your dad comes home.” He replied.

She looked at him, “Yeah,” she said starting the car, “Sure.”

He looked out the car window. With her son buckled in the back she drove the speed limit.

“Can we stop at a store? I need to get stuff to shave.

“Why the hell not? The milk’s gone bad.” She said.


	2. Chapter 2

“He’s your father’s friend.”

Yevgeny tries to remember his father.

He watches the houses and the stores whoosh by outside the car. He’s not supposed to look out the window when he’s in a car because of that time he got sick. And that other time he got sick.

He thinks he might be feeling not very good already.

He looks away from the window and towards the back of the passenger front seat. The man stares out the window and chews one of his nails.

He wants to ask the man if his dad has to think very hard, like he has to think very hard sometimes, to remember his face.

He thinks if he could say all the things he felt he’d say something like how when he tried to remember he’d feel like he was standing in a very dark place. And at the end of that dark place he can tell there is a person. But he can’t see his face because of all the dark. He knows if he just walked the distance he’d see the person. He knows the distance is not very far. But he’s afraid of the dark. So he just stands still.

One of his bottom teeth is loose. He wiggles it with his tongue.

This is what he does instead of asking anything.

*

Park stares at all the kinds of razors. Shaving cream. Or shaving gel. Tooth brush. Tooth paste.

He doesn’t know how to lift his hand and just pick one. He feels someone staring at him and he looks slightly to his side to see a woman probably his mother’s age. She looks uncomfortable and he knows he’s the reason why. He’s been standing and staring too long. So he just grabs the cheapest options and rushes past her. After he pays it takes him a minute to locate Mickey’s family but eventually he sees them waiting by one of the exits.

Svetlana’s holding her bag of milk. The kid is standing very close by her, practically glued to her hip. He’s eating one of those 50 cent bags of chips they keep by the register.

“We go now?” She asks.

He doesn’t know why it’s up to him but he nods.

*

The house isn’t how Mickey described it but it occurs to him that Mickey was describing the house to him as he’d remembered it from when he was living there. And he hadn’t lived in this house for a very long time. It was cluttered but clean. The home of a single mother and her single son and no one else. Mickey’s siblings were either locked up as well or long gone these days. His sister had a husband in the airforce, two daughters, and was a stay at home mom living in Germany. There were kids toys in scattered corners and crayon drawings on the fridge, and unwashed dishes in the sink. He can’t feel Mickey at all in this house.

Upon their arrival Yevgeny had rushed past them to the living room, turned on the cartoons, and the adults instantly become invisible to him.

“Your room is upstairs to the right,” Svetlana told him. She’d left a pack of chicken on the kitchen counter to defrost earlier in the day and she begins to pull spices from the kitchen cabinet as well as a box of mash potato mix.

He thinks a very boring thought: So that’s what the milk had been for.

He heads upstairs.

*

The room is also bare. There’s a bed with clean bedding and a dresser and not much else and this enrages him. He wants to go downstairs and confront her about it. How dare she? How dare you just erase someone from their home and their life. Mickey hadn’t died. This was worse than that. When people die there are families who leave the rooms untouched for years. They don’t make the bed. They don’t pick up the dirty socks off the floor. They don’t vacuum. The dead get more respect. The dead who don’t feel shit.

He takes a deep breath and walks down the stairs. He doesn’t want to start a shouting match in front of a kid.

She’d seasoned the chicken and puts the tray in the oven to bake.

“You got rid of all his shit?” He asks.

She looks at him a little surprised, “I packed it up. He’s not using it.”

“He’s going to get out eventually. He’ll need clothes.”

“I said I packed it up. I didn’t throw it away.” She didn’t turn to look at him. “It’ll be right in the attic waiting for him. Assuming he doesn’t want anything new.”

He feels something hot and angry in his stomach so he walks back up the stairs.

*

He finishes shaving. He looks at himself in the mirror. He looks…he still can’t really decide. Tired.

Older.

Not like he pictures in his head.

He thinks about taking some scissors to his short ponytail but decides not to yet.

He sits on the bed and lays down over the blanket. She couldn’t have replaced the ceiling. So he thinks about Mickey staring up at the same white ceiling.

For five years he has never been more than a short walk away from him.

This year Mickey had decided to start reading all of Stephen King’s books. He’d been on Carrie this week.

“I read that in high school,” Park had said.

“This mother is fucking psychotic,” Mickey had replied not looking up from the chapter he was on.

“Did you ever see the movie?”

“Movie?”

“You had to have. She gets pigs blood dumped on her at the prom?”

Mickey looked up and then down at the book, “That’s this book? Thanks for spoiling the fucking ending.”

“Oh shit..” Park had said.

Then Mickey’s annoyed look melted into a smirk. “Yes I saw the fucking movie. Who hasn’t seen the movie?”

Park had laughed, “Why do you always like to make me feel like a dick?”

“Why do you make it so easy?”

“I don’t make it…that easy.”

“You make it pretty easy, man.”

*

That night he’d put his hand to that scar over Mickey’s heart. There’d been a name there once. Now there was just scar tissue, the words impossible to read.

*

He’d fallen asleep without meaning to. He woke up to the smell of chicken cooking. He was hungry but he couldn’t bring himself to leave the room just yet. Instead he lay down on his side. Tried to remember things like how his hair had smelled. How his skin had felt. It already felt like it was fading away in this personality less, empty shell of a place.

He needed to find a job. He needed to be busy. They’d need things when Mickey got out. They couldn’t live here. He’d been here five minutes and he hated this house. When the time came they’d need to be able to get their own place like that. There was a knock at the door and he looked up.

“Food’s done.” Svetlana told him.

“Oka–” He started to say.

But she was already walking away from him.


	3. Chapter 3

Yevgeny dreams about walking across a rickety bridge. He’s never been on a bridge before so the bridge is one from cartoons. Wooden planks nailed down onto an old thin rope. There are big gaps where the pieces of wood have fallen down into a big empty nothing. He knows there are sharks and rocks and death below him. He thinks about falling through one of the gaps. He thinks about falling through the gaps on purpose. He wonders if he’ll go straight down or if someone will catch him. He wonders who that someone would be.

The last time he’d seen his father was on his fifth birthday. They’d gone because his mother had asked him where he wanted to go and that’s where he’d said he wanted to go because it had been a very long time since they’d last visited.

“Not Chuckie Cheese?” She asked.

“Maybe that my next birthday.” He’d said.

The second he’d put his eyes on him he’d known there was something very wrong. There was something wrong with his father’s face. He remembered seeing his eye all swollen and purple. His father looked at Yevgeny and mouthed words into the phone Yevgeny couldn’t hear. Only his mother’s responses.

His father looked at him for a second then looked straight at his mother and said something.

“It’s his birthday.” His mother replied to whatever his father had said.

His father had blinked and sighed and rubbed his forehead then said a lot of words Yevgeny couldn’t hear.

“He wanted to.” His mother said into the phone.

His father talked. His father did not look at him and Yevgeny knew he was not looking at him on purpose.

“You talked about it. ‘We’ didn’t talk about it. ” His mother had replied. Looking mad or sad Yevgeny wasn’t sure.

“What happened to your face?” Yevgeny asked, “Does it hurt?”

His father didn’t answer his questions. Later his mother would say it was because he wasn’t holding the special phone so he couldn’t hear him. His father said something. His father hung up the special phone and walked away.

They left and got ice cream and the next year when he was six they went to Chuckie Cheese with his friends from school. They did not go back to see his father again.He didn’t ask. He wasn’t told not to but he knew not to.

*

Park eats cold chicken and mashed potatoes standing in the kitchen after everyone else has gone to bed. There’s a microwave but he doesn’t want the whir of cooking or it’s finishing beep to potentially alert anyone to his presence outside his room.

She’s a decent cook.

He wants to talk to Mickey. He can’t talk to him. So he walks outside instead and he keeps walking. It’s not too late. It’s barely past 9.

He doesn’t know what to do with himself. With his time. With his hands. There’s so much time ahead of him. Months and months. He supposes he should be excited to restart his life again. But they ask you if you’ve ever committed a felony on every job application and his life won’t really begin again until Mickey’s back in it.

It’s all still on hold.

There’s a chill in the air. He doesn’t own a coat.

There’s a bar and he goes inside and orders a beer. The bartender tries to make conversation and he tells the truth because the kind of neighborhood this is and the kind of people inside this place he knows his story will be boring.

“I was locked up. Just got out today.”

“Well shit man, congratulations.”

“Thanks.” He sips his beer.

A voice from behind says, “Ain’t you the guy that just shacked up with Mickey’s ex? Didn’t know she was back on dick.”

“What?” He said looking over at the voice. He does not recognize the guy talking. He has no idea when he could have seen him.

He turns back to the bartender who seems like less of an asshole. “I’m not shacked up with her. I’m just staying with her. Her ex husband set it up.”

“Mickey?” The guy says, “Haven’t heard that name in a while. How’s he doin’?”

“You are the first person to ask me that today.” Park realizes and says out loud just as soon as it sinks in he doesn’t know how to answer that.

Mickey had been normal. Annoyingly so. Determined not to treat today like it was anything dramatic. Or worth crying about.

But the night before they’d fucked like the world was ending.

*

“He’s fine.” Park said and he realized his hand had started shaking.

When he noticed something like concern on the bartender’s face he threw down money for his drink and left his half finished beer behind as he walked fast as he could back outside.


	4. Chapter 4

He makes a list of what he has left of him:

1\. The ghost of a feeling from hours ago. Mickey’s pulling his wrist to his mouth. Mickey’s lips on his pulse.

*

He spends what’s left of his twenty dollars on a 6 pack of beer. There’s another 6 pack at Mickey’s house.

That’ll do.

*

He’s going to drink them all. He has no plans beyond drinking them all. He thinks about the last time he felt the need for something anything to happen this much. It ended with him with a knife in a convenience store and no other ideas.

He opens beer number 1 and he starts to drink.

He’s only halfway through the first beer when he notices Yevgeny standing by the couch beside him.

*

Every year on his son’s birthday Mickey would fade away into himself. He’d speak only when addressed by guards. Until he could finally go to bed. He’d stare up at the ceiling. Park knew not to touch him. But then midnight would come and the day would be over and Park would get up from his bed and lay down beside him.

They wouldn’t say a word.

This was every year.

*

Now Park sat in the dark with Mickey’s son staring at him.

“Hey,” He said softly.

“Hi,” Yevgeny said.

“English, wow, I’m honored.” Park said smiling. Quickly he got up off the couch. Stuck the remaining 5 beers in the fridge. Poured the half drunk can down the sink. Yevgeny followed him into the kitchen. Park had already turned on the light.

Park leaned against the kitchen counter, “You have a bad dream or something?”

Yevgeny nodded.

“Do you…wanna talk about it?”

Yevgeny shook his head. Park noticed the boy clenching his fist tightly.

“What’s that?” Park asked.

Yevgeny looked at his fist, seemed to consider his options, then slowly opened his tiny hand towards Park.

“Oh,” Park said, “You lost a tooth.”

Yevgeny nodded. Then closed his fist again.

“You’re supposed to put that under your pillow for the tooth fairy.”

“Fairies aren’t real.” Yevgeny replied.

“Oh…” Park didn’t really know how to respond, “Yeah.”

“Do you…want anything to drink or something?”

“Juice?” Yevgeny said after a minute. It felt awkward fumbling around the unfamiliar kitchen. Yevgeny had to point out the cabinet that contained cups to Park but eventually Park was able to serve him.

Yevgeny sipped his juice. Looking into his cup and not at Park he asked, “Are you really my dad’s friend?”

“Yeah.”

Yevgeny took another sip of juice. He stared at Park. Then he put his empty cup on the kitchen counter.

He held out his fist and then then uncurled his fingers towards Park.

“You…want me to take it?”

Yevgeny nodded.

“What do you want me to do with it?”

Yevgeny shrugged.

Park took the tiny tooth.

Then before Park could say anything else Yevgeny sprinted out the kitchen, up the stairs, and away.

*

He adds to the list of what he has left of him.


	5. Chapter 5

Park goes upstairs and intends to head for bed but walking past Svetlana’s bedroom he hears her call out, “Come in.”

So no one’s sleeping tonight.

She’d been smoking in her bed. She’s sitting on the side over the blanket in a tank top and black leggings. She looks like a ballerina. A ballerina whose seen some shit.

She taps some ash into the an empty coke can by her bed.

Then she inhales and looks at him, exhales. She nods towards her left for him to sit down beside her. He does but near the edge leaving a noticeable space between them. He holds out Yevgeny’s tooth to her.

She smirks, “He’s been fucking with that all week. ‘Bout time. He gave it to you?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you keep it.” She drops her nub of a cigarette into the coke can.

“But…”

“He gave it to you.” She says and the topic is over. Park puts the tooth into his pocket.

Park glances at her cellphone and sees the time 12:30 am.

Park looks around. It’s what you’d expect of a woman’s bedroom: scarves, perfume bottles, candles, a giant bed with a bunch of pillows and shit. It’s cluttered but there’s an organized chaos to it.

“This used to be Mickey’s father’s room.”

Mickey’s father had died about two years back. Heart attack or some shit.

“Oh.”

“We sold the guns. Burned everything else.”

Park smiled at that.

“How is he?”

Park got quiet.

“I’d like to know.”

Park remained silent.

“You don’t like me?” Svetlana asked.

“I just…I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t know you.”

Park took a deep breath. Then said, “And I know how you met him.”

Svetlana got quiet at that.

Then, “He told you about that?”

“It took…it was a really long time but…yeah. He did.”

“And you’re mad at me?” Svetlana asked.

“No. I’m just. Can’t kill someone who’s already dead. You can keep fantasizing about it but…can’t do shit. I don’t like not being able to…do anything…fix anything I get…and then I make bad choices.”

“You have a very sweet face you know. Angry eyes but…sweet face. Pretty face.”

Park looked at her.

“Prison was hard for you.”

“It’s hard for everybody.”

“It’s less hard though when you find someone to take care of you. No one can blame you for feeling obligated. But no one expects you to actually keep promises you made to survive.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Just you don’t need to survive anymore. You might still be feeling sentimental but how are you going to feel 6 months from now? But maybe you hold out for two more years maybe you can actually do that. What happens if he doesn’t get out? What then? You gonna put your life on hold for another 7 years?”

Park didn’t speak but he felt his blood getting hotter.

“He’s going to get out in two years. He’s doing what he needs to. He’s keeping out of trouble. He’ll say whatever he has to say he is going to get out.”

“What if he doesn’t? Shit happens. Someone on the parole board doesn’t like his face. What do you do then? You live in this house for two years. My son knows you then. It’s been a day and he’s giving you parts of him. You’re going to be the man in his life. What happens when you hear 7 more years? You stay then? We keep playing house? 7 more years?”

“I wasn’t Mickey’s bitch,” Park says looking at her, “We were family in there. I fucked him because I wanted to. We took care of each other because that’s what people who love each other do. He’s my best fucking friend. That doesn’t stop because he’s in there and I’m out here. 8 years. 7 years. 70 years. I wait. I’m not leaving him behind.”

She leaned her face real close and said, “You break my son’s heart I’ll cut yours out in your sleep.”

“My first week in there. I thought I was going to die. I planned to. My first day there I picked a fight with this guy who radiated psychopath. He beat the shit out of me. I saw white. I felt warm. I heard my heart beating. I was going to die. I listened for my heartbeat to stop.”

He talked and he felt himself slipping back there.

“And Mickey saved you? The white knight?”

“No. Guards fucking pulled the guy off me. But when I could walk again and they walked me into my cell there Mickey was in the bunk below me.”

“What was he doing?”

“Nothing. Just laying down, staring at the ceiling. I’d learn he did that sometimes…get into this place where he couldn’t talk and I was in this place where I couldn’t talk and we just laid there in quiet together for hours. And for hours all I could hear was the sound of him breathing. And…the thing is. I had realized something fucking horrifying.”

“What?”

“I didn’t want to die anymore. And if I didn’t die all that there was left was all the days ahead of me in this place. And I could see all the days ahead of me and it was like…I could see the number of them and there were thousands of them and I was going to drown in them and…all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. I could feel my heart in my chest and it felt like it was going to explode and I thought, ‘Good. Okay. Die now. I need to die now. Because I can’t do it. There’s too many days. I need to die. I need to die.’ And I was so sure…and I was crying…but then this hand came down. Mickey’s. And I reached out to it. And…I wasn’t better. But it was something to focus on. That hand holding mine. That was something solid and there and if I just kept my mind on that I didn’t have to think about the minutes going by because the minutes were going past me. And even if it was just little by little this pool of numbers I’d been drowning in it was getting smaller. It was going to get smaller. And even if no one else in that place gave a shit about me and even if no one outside gave a shit about me I knew from that second on there was someone there who however much of his own shit he had going on he heard me drowning and he reached out his fucking hand. He didn’t know who I was. He reached out his hand.”

Svetlana looked at him.

“2 years from now. 7 years from now. 70 years from now. I’m going to be standing right outside that fucking place waiting for him and I am going to take him home.”


	6. Chapter 6

He talks to Mickey on the phone. He closes his eyes and he lets that voice envelope him. He touches his hand to his heart.

Thump thump. “I love you.” Thump thump. “I miss you.” Thump thump.

“Are you okay?”

“You’ll be okay.”

“It’s going to be okay.“

And then another day has passed.

*

Trust comes. A week passes and then a few days more.There’s a night Yevgeny has a fever. It’s gone by morning but his mother decides against school. She gets called into work and he volunteers to watch the kid without hesitation. She agrees with less hesitation than either were prepared for. But in that moment it’s the start of a new normal. He can be alone in the house with her child. Her child can be alone with him. That’s normal and okay and safe. This will be less of a thing in the months and years before them but today it’s the first day.

She kisses her son and only glances back once.

They play with cars. They watch cartoons. He makes him breakfast and then lunch and at some point in the day Yevgeny asks him what happened to his tooth.

“I mailed it in a letter I wrote to your dad.”

Yevgeny looked up at him eyes wide.

“That’s who you really wanted to have it, right?”

Yevgeny nods staring down at the floor.

Park touches his tiny chin and brings his eyes to his.

“I know you miss him. He misses you too.”

“He doesn’t want me to visit him.”

“He’s not in a place for kids.” Park tells him.

“Is he okay?” Yevgeny asks.

“He’s…” Park tries to find the words, “Sometimes he’s okay. Sometimes he’s not. Sometimes he’s lonely. Sometimes he’s bored. Sometimes he has moments when he’s happy. Like when he gets to talk to us on the phone.”

Yevgeny doesn’t say a word.

“Is he scared?” Yevgeny asks.

“Everyone’s scared sometimes.” Park says. Because that’s what you say to children when you can’t explain how there’s a lot of different ways to be scared. Or lonely. Or bored. Or happy. There are levels. There are degrees. There’d been days he’d been so scared he’d forgotten how to breath and convinced himself his heart would explode and kill him. There’d been days he’d been so pissed or numb or fearless he could have slit a guard’s throat and not blinked. There were days he’d been so bored he’d get throbbing, nauseating, headaches. There’d been days he’d been so deliriously happy just being in a moment with Mickey he’d told himself maybe it wasn’t so bad where he was. He’d thought stupid shit like that. Because Mickey could make him forget how stupid it was to think that. That there was every anything okay about where they were and what they lacked. But…it had been a life. They’d adapted. Because that’s what people do. You get used to being told what to do every second of everyday of being on a different planet from your children or your parents or your friends. You make a life raft with what you do have. Yes his love was real. But that didn’t make it worth it losing all those years. It would never be okay. It was just a thing that had happened. Nothing to do but live it. But there was something Mickey would say to him every time they said goodbye over the phone. Now Park said it to Mickey’s son.

“Everyday he’s a little bit closer to us, okay?”

Yevgeny looked at him.

“When I was your age two years seemed like a very long time. But a day would go by and then another and then one day two years were gone. I’d always be so surprised because it always feels so slow while it’s passing but so quick when it’s gone. When he’s looking at you you’re going to barely remember what it felt like him not being there. Because you’ll have him here.”

Yevgeny didn’t exactly understand but if Park was telling him he’d be happier with his dad than without him, well, he knew that was true. He’d always known that would be true.

So he says, “Okay.” And then he remembers his dream.

“It’s like walking across a bridge. Bridges are scary. But you’re where you wanna go when you get across them with your car or walking and you don’t fall through and the sharks don’t bite your butt off. And then you’re at the movies and my dad could be there too.”

“Uh, yeah,” Park said smiling at him, “that exactly.”

Suddenly Yevgeny jumps up from his seat, runs up to his room, runs back to Park. He shoves dozens of crayon drawings into Parks hand.

“Will you mail these to my dad? I know he doesn’t want me to go to the jail but ask him in pictures are okay and he can draw me stuff too.”

“Yeah,” Park said. He thought about telling Yevgeny about all the pictures he’d seen his father draw. Random cartoons, and robots, but sometimes beaches and deserts, an empty baseball field. His sister’s face, his mother’s face, his son’s face. Mickey didn’t like for you to say they were good. But they always were.

But he thought he’d let his father give him that.

*

For his seventh birthday Yevgeny got a trip to Chuckie Cheese and a hand drawn birthday card from his father. Svetlana looked at it.

“What is that?”

Park looked at it, “Okay that’s a giant robot and I guess that’s Yev driving it?”

*

That night Park laid down in a room that he lived in now. He stared up at the same ceiling that Mickey would have had to.

At 11:58 pm he took a deep breath and held it.

At 12 am he let it go.

And the bridge got smaller.

And the wait got shorter.

*

Hours later he’d talk to Mickey on the phone.

Yevegny talked to him a little to thank him for the card then handed the phone to Park.

“Hey,” Mickey said before Park.

And you know that thing where you can hear someone smiling?

*

There’s a day they reach the end of the bridge. Maybe it’s two years later. Maybe it’s nine years. It’s not seventy. Mickey walks out of that place. He’s different than he was before. He’s still himself.

His son’s shy smile is the first thing he sees.

Then there’s Park. The sun’s so bright they shimmer. For a second he thinks maybe they’re not real.

But then they run up to him. They wrap their arms around him. And they are solid and there and he is solid and there.

They take him home.


End file.
